


Five Times

by Write_No_Evil



Series: Jason Todd and the Superhero Community [1]
Category: Batman (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics), Red Robin - Fandom, Teen Titans (Comics), Under the Red Hood
Genre: Gen, Jason Todd Angst, Resurrected Jason Todd, batfamily
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-29
Updated: 2016-04-05
Packaged: 2018-05-30 00:07:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6399715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Write_No_Evil/pseuds/Write_No_Evil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Red Hood works with other superheroes. Five superheroes complain about the way Hood fights. Five members of the Batfamily have to tell them that he died.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Red Robin and the Teen Titans

"Okay, but why do we have to work with him?" Cassie asked, pointing at Jason, who leant on a wall in the Teen Titan's Tower. Tim sighed, wondering if she heard any of what he had just said.  
  
"Because this mission requires people with his skills."  
  
"So why not ask Batman or Nightwing. Heck, ask the new Robin," Cassie asked. Superboy behind nodded slightly. Tim sighed once again.  
  
"Batman and Robin are both on the other half of the planet and Nightwing is busy in Gotham. Red Hood is the only one who could help us."  
  
"Can't we do this on our own though?" Cassie asked, making her want to not work with Jason blatantly clear.  
  
"No," Tim almost growled.  
  
"Yeah Blondie, ya need me to help," Jason drawled, pushing off the wall to saunter closer to them. Cassie glared at the nickname.  
  
"Robin, this man is a murder! He's a psychopath, he'll betray us. We're better off working without this crazy man," Cassie complained. Tim sighed once again and tried to pacify her.  
  
"You're Wondergirl, ain'tcha?" Jason began.  
  
"Jay shut up," Tim murmured.  
  
"Yes I am. What's it to you?" Cassie glared at him. Jason smirked though it couldn't be seen under his helmet.  
  
"I've slept with Wonder Woman before," Jason grinned as rage spread across Cassie's face. She launched herself at him, about to punch him with all her strength. Jason ducked it, laughing as she swung at him again. He danced out of reach, riling her up even more.  
  
"Cassie, stand down!" Tim yelled at her, trying to stop her. Jason grin grew as he continued to dodge her. Growing bored, he grabbed her outstretched wrist and jerked her forward, spinning past her as she flew forward. Once he was behind her, he punched her in the middle of her back. The force wasn't enough to put her down, but Cassie stumbled forward, eyes wide in shock.  
  
"But how? That is an Amazonian technique," Cassie gaped at Jason, surprised at how he knew an Amazonian technique.  
  
"I slept with Wonder," Jason told her as if that explained everything. Cassie clenched her fists, wanting so badly to punch his face in.  
  
"Cassie, enough," Tim told her. "Like it or not, Red Hood is working with us." Tim turned and walked to the plane, not leaving any time for her to argue. She glared at Red Hood then followed Tim. Jason watched the rest of the Titans follow their leader, all glaring at him and giving him untrusting looks.  
  
"I don't know why we have to work with him, he's a murderer," Superboy muttered, looking at Tim.  
  
"You know I can hear you, right?" Red Hood asked through the comms. Superboy turned to look out the window to see Red Hood waving at him from his plane. Superboy glared at him, wondering if he should shoot lasers at his plane. Red Hood killed villains, people wouldn't care if he died too.  
  
The plane landed before he could go through with his plan. They ambled out into the dockyards.  
  
"Remember this is a stealth mission. Superboy and I will be one team, Impulse, Cassie and Red Hood will be the other team." The group grumbled, Cassie looking murderous. "Cassie please don't try and kill him."  
  
They split up and began working their ways through the warehouses that littered the docks. Eventually, Cassie and Jason found the boxes of Fear Toxin that they were after. Before they could take them off the dealers, a guard spotted them. Immediately, they were fired on with guns.  
  
"What's going on in there?" Tim asked over the comms, in the warehouse next to them.  
  
"Just being fired on Replacement, nothing to worry about," Jason told him, jumping behind some crates for safety as Wonder Girl deflected the bullet with her armbands and Impulse ran away from the bullets. His hands reached for his guns strapped on his thighs, returning fire, his bullets flew straight and striking the heads and necks of the people firing upon him.  
  
"What are you doing? You're killing them," Cassie barked, hitting the guns out of his hands.  
  
"What do you want me to do, let them kill us?" Red Hood snarled back at her.  
  
"Take them out without killing them!" She yelled back. Before he could reply, they were ambushed by more men. The three took them down pretty quickly, Wonder Girl's strength, Impulse's speed and Red Hood's skills too much for the thugs to handle. It was only after they had finished the group that Jason noticed the bomb placed next to the crates.  
  
"BOMB!" He yelled, running to Wonder Girl and throwing her over his shoulders. He ran towards the door of the warehouse whilst she yelled at him to unhand her, Impulse sprinting past him to safety almost instantly. As he got out of the warehouse, he threw her forward just as the bomb exploded, taking the warehouse down. Wonder Girl rolled to a stop, unharmed from the blast. Red Robin and Superboy ran up to her, yelling is she was okay.  
  
"Yeah I'm fine," she told them, rubbing her arms as they surveyed the burning wreckage in front of them.  
  
"Where's Red Hood?" Red Robin asked, eyes already scanning the debris.  
  
"Does it matter? He's a killer, not a hero. He deserved to die," Cassie told him. Red Robin growled at her.  
  
"Shut up!" Tim yelled at her, beginning to push the burning chunks of the roof away, desperately trying to find evidence that Jason was still alive. At the back of his mind, he wondered if this was what batman saw and felt the day Jason had died. Cassie flinched at his tone.  
  
"Why do you stand up for him? He's a killer! He tried to kill you!" Superboy asked.  
  
"Because he's my brother! Because he's already died before," that shocked the Titans. They looked at each other in surprise but Tim continued. "Becuase his father left him to look after his drug addict step-mother. Becuase when he finally found his real mother after years of living on his own on the streets, she sold him out to the Joker. Because he was beaten up by the Joker with a crowbar. Because he was killed in an explosion in a warehouse just like this. Because he died when he was fifteen years old. Because he was revived and for a year, walked the streets of Gotham without his higher brain functions. Because he was dipped into the Lazarus Pit and while it healed him, it turned him mad. Because when he was the only one there for me after Batman's son came and I was kicked out.  
"Our relationship isn't the best, but he's trying. The Pit changed him, made him mad but I know he's trying. He can't help it damnit. He didn't deserve his life but he's trying his hardest. He's had so many bad things happen to him, so stop talking bad about him! He's trying his best, giving his all and you're too busy seeing the bad that you can't see the good in him. He's saved people, stopped drug dealers and human traffickers. He's turned one of the worst parts of Gotham almost safe. Without him, we would be stretched too thin to protect all of Gotham. He deals with the worst of them, gets the most injuries so we don't!"  
  
Tim punched the block of granite he was trying to move, biting his lips as he tried not to cry. His older brother was trapped under the rubble, maybe dead, definitely injured. cassie stepped forward, lifting the boulder away. Beneath it was a metal door. Tim scrambled off it, pushing it up, not caring that the hot metal burnt through his gloves. Beneath the metal sheet laid Jason. The man groaned and looked up at Tim. His helmet was cracked and his suit was burned but still he managed to croak a sentence out.  
  
"Sing ma praises a lil' more Baby Bats." Tim sighed in relief at his wit, understanding him even when his Crime Alley accent slipped in. He wasn't too badly hurt. Superboy moved to lift him out, Jason's body slumping, a sign of his unconsciousness.  
  
  
When Jason woke up, he was in the medibay in the Teen Titans Tower. Turning his head to left to survey his surroundings, a lesson he was taught from Bruce and the League of Assassins. To his surprise, the figure to his left wasn't Tim's. Cassie sat by his side, hands folded in her lap. She had a distant look on her face as she stared at the opposite wall.  
  
"Wha' you doin' here?" Jason asked, words blurring into each other. Cassie startled to alertness, looking over to him.  
  
"I.. I came to apologise.. I shouldn't have," she trailed off, trying to find the right words.  
  
"It's fine Wonder." Jason closed his eyes.  
  
"No! No, it's not. I treated you like dirt. While you kill, and I do not agree with that, I shouldn't have immediately acted like you were beneath me. What you've been through is awful, but I didn't even stop to think what you must have gone through, too busy thinking you were a monster. You didn't deserve that to happen to you. That was unhonourable and not what an Amazon Warrior should have done... I am sorry Red Hood."  
  
"Lemme guess, Red Rob told ya about my death." Cassie looked away, telling him everything. "It's fine really. Just, don't pity me, okay."  
  
Cassie nodded and Jason smiled at her, closing his eyes and beginning to sleep again. His eyes opened as he thought of something.  
  
"Wake me up in two hours 'kay. I need to get back to Roy in Star City before Batman gets back from wherever he is." Cassie nodded and remained sitting by his bedside, guarding him, and letting him rest.


	2. Barbara and the Birds of Prey

"No! I will not work with him Babs. He's a stone cold killer," Dinah protested as she saw who she was working with. Jason stood in front of her, a smile smile directed at her, half in politeness and half to cover up the pain he felt when he heard her words. Barbara sighed as she listened to her blonde friend complain.

"Dinah, he was to only one free to help you. Nightwing and Batman are both working and Robin is at school. Red Hood was the only one who I could call upon to help you and know for definite he didn't have anything more important than this mission."

"Huh, figures he doesn't have a job. Lemme guess, he uses the money he gets paid for killing people to live on. What a scumbag, he doesn't even work," Dinah snarled.

"Dinah that's not true!" Barbara told her, patience running low. She rubbed her forehead, wondering how she could change her friend's mind. Dinah really didn't want to work with Jason. "Look, you don't have to like it but you have to work with him. The sooner you get it done, the sooner you can leave him." Dinah didn't reply and Barbara took it as her finally accepting her fate.

"I don't like your methods," Dinah snarled at him. "I'm leading this mission, you do what I day and you. Don't. Kill."

"Okay okay lady," Jason rose his hands in surrender. "Lead the way." Dinah sent him one last glare then turned and stormed off, muttering about being saddled with a murdering psycho. Jason ambled after her, hands in his pockets.

"I don't think she likes me Babs," Jason drawled. He smiled as he heard Barbara sigh over the comm. A thud followed as her elbows fell onto the table in front of her.

"Jason you don't always give the best of impressions," Barbara told him.

"Hey, I resent that! All I did was turn up at the meeting point and smiled at her. She's obviously so in love with me and she's angry about it," even though she couldn't see his face, she knew he was smirking. "It's not my fault I'm so irresistibly handsome."

"Jason, you can't keep hiding your pain, emotional and physical, under sarcasm and jokes. Stop bottling your feelings up, talk to us. Talk to me or Tim. Or Alfred. Or go to Leslie, she can help. We want to help you," Barbara softened her voice, trying to reach out to the wayward male. "Maybe you should go to a therapist, they do work Jason."

"Hood out." Jason ended the call. Although Barbara could call him again, she didn't. Talking to Jason, especially about feelings, was a delicate thing. There was a small, invisible line, something that shouldn't be crossed or Jason would shut himself away again and put his walls up again, walls that took forever to be brought down. Nobody was sure where exactly the line was, it was different for everybody in the Batfamily.

* * *

A tipoff had led to Jason and Dinah running around the city they had been staying in, chasing after a guy who could lead them to their target.

"Stop running!" Jason yelled at the male. The man, no older than sixteen, yelped and sprinted faster, turning into another alley. Jason growled, following him. He urged himself to run faster. Jason's strong long legs, coupled with the training he had from both Batman and the League of Assassins as well as years running from people on the streets, meant he was slowly closing the distance on the male in front of him. But just like Jason had been as a street rat, the teen he was chasing was also a Runner, a job given to the fastest children in a gang to run errands around the city.

"Don't let him escape!" Dinah yelled into his comm, following him on the rooftops. Her sudden loud noise had Jason jerking his head to the side.

"Keep it down, woman," he told her over the comm.

"Guys, just get the teen," Barbara told them trying to stop a fight from erupting as she watched them from her screens in the Belltower.

"Yeah yeah..." Jason muttered, picking up his pace. The teen rounded the corner and a ten seconds later Jason charged around it as well. He skidded to a stop when he couldn't find a trace of the boy he had been pursuing. He looked around the narrow alley, trying to find a place where the boy could have hidden or gone.

"Do you see anything?" He asked Barbara, knowing the cameras in his helmets were showing her what he saw. He switched to infrared but couldn't find anything.

"There's no Zeta activity so he's hasn't teleported away," Barbara told him. "Canary, do you see anything?"

"Nothings Babs. Maybe if Hood had bene quick enough, he wouldn't have gotten away," Dinah remarked. "Obviously too busy doing nothing. Maybe he should train more."

A scream stopped Jason or Barbara from retorting. Jason and Dinah ran to the source, seeing a young woman backed up against the wall and a different man from whom they were chasing, male leaning over her. Feeling the rage take over, Jason slammed into him, pulling the man off of the woman. He reigned a flurry of punches on the guy's face, Barbara's and Dinah's shouts for him to stop blurring away. He continued punching even when he felt the man's cheekbone give away. His hand went to his boot, grabbing the knife he had stuck there. Just as he was about to cut the sucker's neck, Dinah grabbed him by the shoulders and hauled him up, gritting her teeth as she strained to move his weight.

"What are you doing? You almost killed the guy!" She yelled in his face. Jason tutted.

"So what if I had?" Dinah's eyes widened. "If we let him go, he's just gonna go after another girl. We wouldn't have saved anyone then. Killing him would mean he wouldn't hurt anyone else. It's not like he even matters, going around trying to rape women 'cos he's bigger than them. Scum like him deserve to die. And it'll give everyone else a message. Don't mess with us. If we killed him, people would be too scared to take his place unlike if we just threw him into prison."

"We don't kill! Heroes don't kill!" Dinah yelled at him. "You're not God, you don't get to decide who lives and dies."

"I ain't a hero or God but I ain't exactly human either." His words confused Dinah but before she could ask him what the hell he meant, the man behind her groaned in pain and she looked back at him. When she looked back at Jason, about to get him to talk (mostly by her fists), he had vanished. She suppressed a yell, turning to find the woman they had saved running down the alley.

"You're welcome," she muttered, phoning an ambulance to take the man to hospital. After the call had finished, she scaled the building and sat on the roof.

"Why is Hood such a ... a... gah! I can't describe him, he's infuriating, wrong, a stone cold murderer, a psycho who doesn't deserve to live!" Dinah complained to Barbara. "He's tried to kill several superheroes Bab! He's mad!"

"Dinah! Enough!" Barbara yelled at her, sick of hearing her talk down on Jason.

"Why are you defending his Babs? He's a killer who doesn't do anything other than beat up people," she asked. "I bet he beats up women as well."

"Dinah stop it! If you want to know why I stick up for him, it's because Red Hood is, _was_ , the second Robin." Dinah froze eyes widening and mouth falling open in surprise.

"As in, the Robin that was beaten by the Joker and killed in a bomb?" She really didn't want to know the answer.

"Yes." Barbara sighed.

"But he's alive!" Barbara sighed again, running her hands through her red hair. This was going to take some time.

"We're not sure how he came back, but he did. Something fo a ..a ..."

"Miricale?" Dinah supplied. Barabra snorted.

"I don't think waking up after being beat by the Joker, in a casket and having to claw your way out, screaming for your mentor all the while as your lungs and mouth fill with soil. And when you finally heave yourself out of the ground and manage to stumble your way out of the graveyard, to be hit by a car? Not really a miracle to me."

"Oh my God," Dinah whispered, heart sinking as Barbara told her about the Red Hood's past. It was tragic and awful and she was beginning to regret calling him those names.

"Baring in mind he died at the age of fifteen, it somehow gets worse," Barbara told her. "Jason doesn't like to speak about it, but we've gathered footage in the year he lived in Gotham."

"Go on." Dinah knew she wasn't going to like it.

"From what we've seen, he .. basically acted like a zombie. He couldn't speak read or do... well anything really. He walked around Gotham in a hoodie and thin jeans. He had no higher brain functions, he would eat when he was hungry and defend himself when gangs fought him but other than that? He couldn't do it."

"But how come he seems alright now?"

"Tch, he's as far from alright as possible. Talia al Ghul found him and took him to the League of Assassins. I'm not sure when but she threw him into the Lazarus Pit-"

"The one that heals people and makes them crazy?"

"Yup, which explains Hood's madness and anger issues. It healed him, both physically and mentally. In the years Jason was believed to be dead, Batman got more violent. The third Robin came to him and offered to be his Robin, Batman needs Robin as much as Gotham needs Batman. I'm not sure when but Talia told Hood about him being replaced. Think how that must have felt Dinah. To be brutally hurt killed and then find out he's been replaced like he was nothing.

"I asked him once, when he was Robin, how he wanted to die. You know what he said? He said he would be happy dying, whilst saving people. He died, covering the mother that sold him to the Joker, in an abandoned warehouse in a remote city. No one was there, no one knew when he died or of what he died, smoke inhalation, blood loss, body going into cardiac arrest or the trauma of being beaten with a crowbar."

"It must have been awful."

"It was. And when he found out that his murderer, the one person he thought Batman would never let hurt him, was alive and not even in prison? He must have seen red.With the Pit's madness, Hood came back to Gotham and tried to kill his "successor" as well as countless others. He believes that killing villains stops people from being hurt repeatedly. Especially the big ones in Gotham, who regularly breakout from Arkham. Putting them down stops them hurting even more innocent victims."

"But that's wrong!" Dinah protested.

"Yeah, but the parts he patrols, East Gotham, Crime Alley, the number of crimes in those places has decreased. In terms of fighting crime, which we all do, he' s doing well, better than most. He's efficient even if his methods are brutal and wrong." They sit in silence for awhile, Dinah letting the new information sink in.

"You said earlier he didn't have a job. It's true, but not for the reason you think it is. He isn't lazy or uses the money he gets paid for killing people, he's not a mercenary Dinah, he can't work."

"Why not?"

"It's kinda hard to find a job when you're legally dead." Dinah gasped.

"Oh God."

"From his bank accounts, it seems he donates a large sum of money to charities working with homeless people. Dinah, he's a nice guy, an ol' teddy bear beneath his tough man facade, but he's been through so much and it's changed him."

"I know Babs... and I'm sorry. I've heard so many negative things about him that I just thought he was a bad man. Maybe I was slightly biased when I first met him. " Barbara could hear the regret and guilt in her voice.

"Yeah, he heard it."

"I guess he is a nice guy," she remembered him fighting the guy after the tried to hurt the girl. "Seemed a little too excessively violent though. Almost killed the at guy"

"Jason has been known to admire and respect women, more so than men. He treats them as equals. I think it had something to do with being raised in Crime Alley with a drug addict mother who was dumped on him after his father died in prison before he reached double digits. He's learnt to respect them after seeing them go through hell every day and yet they still smiled. He doesn't beat up women or children. If anything it's the exact opposite, he beats up the people who do that to women and children."

"I'm sorry Barbara. Really I am." Dinah spoke quietly putting as much sincerity as possible behind her words.

"I don't thnk it's me you should be apologising to."

"True, but where's Hood?"Dinah heard a ping through the comms. Typing followed.

"Jason says he found the leader of the gang. I'll send you the location. Apologise then." Dinah smiled.

"Thanks Babs."

 


End file.
